A little while back, we looked at wind industry claims that levelled the blame for the mounting piles of bat carcasses left rotting around wind farms squarely at the bats themselves (see our post here).

Apparently, the millions of bats that find themselves victims of the great wind power fraud are “confused” – and would have easily avoided being sliced, diced and battered if only they were just a bit smarter and/or if they’d undergone turbine recognition and awareness training.

Bats (or at least the dimmest of them) apparently can’t tell the difference between trees (a source of food and shelter) and giant turbines (a guaranteed pathway to the promised land).

For birds and bats, successfully negotiating 56m blades with their outer tips doing over 350km/h is, according to wind industry ecological “consultants”, apparently, just a case of keeping your cool, relying on your superior IQ and ‘Top Gun’ training – or NOT.

Bat IQ survey team interview 3 from the bottom percentile.

No doubt, over time, Darwin’s theory about the survival of the fittest will rule the day and the dullest bats’ genes will be removed from the pool – a breed of “super” bats will emerge, not only equipped with superlative navigation and blade-dodging flying skills, but with indestructible lungs.

In the meantime, one of the critical components of a balanced eco-system will be slaughtered wholesale; as part and parcel of the great wind power fraud and the eco-fascists’ manic quest to carpet the world in giant fans.

EDMONTON — Thousands of bats die on southern Alberta wind farms each year, but it’s unclear what effect that is having on the overall population, says Canada’s foremost bat expert, Robert Barclay.

Most of the bats die because their lungs collapse when they run into low air pressure around the tips of the wind turbines — not because they hit the towers or blades.

Hoary bat carcass at the base of a wind turbine at Pincher Creek,Alberta: lungs turned to pulp, but otherwise ‘uninjured’.

With wind farms now coming to north-central Alberta — including two new projects east of Edmonton — the impact on bats migrating from northern forests needs further study, says Barclay, a University of Calgary biology professor.

It’s a serious issue, but with no accurate count of the province’s bat population, “it’s hard to say if turbines are killing too many,” said Barclay.

“We know very little about the abundance and distribution of bats in central to northern Alberta.”

Barclay’s research, begun in 2006, uncovered the surprising fact that migrating bats are much more likely than birds to be killed by wind turbines.

Thanks to their sonar bats can detect solid structures, but they cannot detect the changing air pressure that causes bleeding in their lungs. Birds’ lungs are able to withstand the pressure change.

Barclay’s groundbreaking research took place at Transalta’s Summerview wind farm near Pincher Creek in 2005. When the company noticed bat carcasses under the turbines, it asked Barclay to do a study.

Barclay and his team found 20 to 30 dead bats per turbine. But that number was cut almost in half when Transalta decided not run the turbines when the wind was low and bats are most active, he said.

“This work done at Summerview was one of the first cases in North America where this mitigation was adopted, and has since been recommended in many other regions across Canada,” said Mike Peckford, TransAlta’s senior environmentalist.

The province now requires wind farm companies to do a pre-construction study to determine the level of bat activity around a proposed wind farm site, says Lisa Wilkinson, Alberta Environment bat specialist.

The problem is bats often fly in the same windy corridors preferred by wind farms, she added.

Companies can be required to do a count of dead bats near each turbine. If fatalities are too high, they can be required to take steps to reduce them, Wilkinson said.

Those conditions were recently put on northern Alberta’s largest proposed wind farm after the environment department determined there is a “medium to high risk” of bat fatalities.

That project, the Grizzly Bear Creek wind farm by the German energy giant E. ON Climate and Renewables, will have 50 90-metre turbines. Most of the turbines will be east of Vegreville in Minburn County.

The Bull Creek project by BluEarth Renewables was the first to get approval in north-central Alberta, mostly in Wainwright County. It will have 17 turbines at 80 metres high, scaled back from a proposed 46 turbines.National Post

Bob Sallinger with the Audubon Society of Portland said wind farms across the country have killed more than 80 eagles over the last decade.

“If you have dozens and dozens of them on the landscape it is basically a giant Cuisinart for birds,” said Sallinger. “Bald eagles took decades to recover … we almost lost them because of DDT. Golden eagles are a species biologists are concerned about because they appear to be declining.” http://www.kgw.com/news/Official-Wind–257599781.html

“Improperly sited and operated wind energy facilities can kill significant numbers of federally protected birds and other species,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, urging developers to follow the Service’s Land-based Wind Energy Guidelines. “That’s why it’s imperative that wind energy developers work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to minimize these impacts at every stage in the process.”
Commercial wind power projects can cause the deaths of federally protected birds in four primary ways: collision with wind turbines, collision with associated meteorological towers, collision with, or electrocution by, associated electrical power facilities, and nest abandonment or behavior avoidance from habitat modification.http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/utility-company-sentenced-wyoming-killing-protected-birds-wind-projects-0

Wind turbines at Altamont Pass kill an estimated 880 to 1,300 birds of prey each year, including up to 116 golden eagles, 300 red-tailed hawks, 380 burrowing owls, and additional hundreds of other raptors including kestrels, falcons, vultures, and other owl species. The APWRA is an ecological sink for golden eagles and other raptor species and may be having significant impacts on populations of birds that are rare and reproduce infrequently. http://www.goldengateaudubon.org/conservation/birds-at-risk/avian-mortality-at-altamont-pass/

“Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks—as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.”

—nj Near Atlantic City NJ 5 industrial wind turbines were erected which are killing an average of 76 birds and bats per year per turbine(not the 1-2 that AWEA and US Fish and Wildlife publicize). This has been documented by the local Audubon society. Though to make sure not too information is known…they only study for 2 years after installation then after that….It is a shameful secret! These killed a Peregrine Falcon of which there are only 25 breeding pair in the entire state, also numerous Osprey, a Green Heron, a Dunlin and many others….is not worth it for these highly variable power producers which require full CO2 emitting backup and power shadowing. Money would be much better spent on conservation and efficiency…which have been shown to be ten times more cost effective thereby doing more for our planet

“Collisions with buildings kill 97 to 976 million birds annually; collisions with high-tension lines kill at least 130 million birds, perhaps more than one billion; collisions with communications towers kill between 4 and 5 million based on “conservative estimates,” but could be as high as 50 million; cars may kill 80 million birds per year; and collisions with wind turbines killed an estimated at 20,000 to 37,000 birds per year in 2003, with all but 9,200 of those deaths occurring in California. Toxic chemicals, including pesticides, kill more than 72 million birds each year, while domestic cats are estimated to kill hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species each year. Erickson et al. (2005) estimate that total cumulative bird mortality in the United States “may easily approach 1 billion birds per year.” ” http://www.vawind.org/assets/nrc/nrc_wind_report_050307.pdf

The plight of the bat is of no importance to so-called environmentalists who consider shoving massive throbbing and spinning metal shards into the ground in areas where endangered Southern Bent Wing Bats have a nesting cave.

The male bats fly out of this cave during the night in search of food around, what appears from the research so far done, a very wide area. This makes them vulnerable to the screeching, turning blades of these introduced monsters.

While in the nesting cave, being bombarded with infrasound and low frequency noises, babies could fall dead from the roof of the caves and adult females suddenly woken and die from shock.

That’s if they ever return to this solitary cave to breed after these ‘wonderful environmentally concerned’ money grubbing fools begin to pound the earth to install their totems to stupidity.

All the while the EPBC says ‘mitigate’ – and meaning its OK build your death machines, the bats will either die out or find somewhere else to go, forgetting bats are an important component of our environment. Southern bent wing bats are so endangered, with only apparently two breeding caves, one in Victoria and one in SA, and the two colonies are not known to interbreed and do not routinely meet for social chit chats.

These so-called ‘environmentalists’ are apparently concerned that the earth will soon become unliveable, but in their tunnelled vision they’ve forgotten or never even thought about what they were wanting to save it for.

Instead they should focus their attention on the need for research into this creature and its habits before it’s too late – those who call themselves environmentalists should wake up out their stupor and accept that they have been misled, used and confused.

There are those who are trying to do the research but without the backing of the full environmental movement and funding agencies its a hard slog.
Too often we see money spent on research which is of little use except for social ‘engineering’ in the name of understanding society to suit political agendas, the money spent on this could be better spent on researching endangered creatures to ensure we do nothing more to damage their chances of survival.